The campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has entered a new phase and it is beginning to look like support for Romney and Gingrich aligns with the deepening division between “establishment” Republicans and the insurgent Tea Party movement. We have seen Tea Party support crystallise around Gingrich, even though he is an “imperfect vessel,” largely because they are even more unwilling to support the mainstream candidate.
The Republican party is experiencing an insurgency among the same disaffected cohorts they had enlisted in their campaigns against Obama and it’s causing a degree of panic within their ranks evident in the sheer volume of negative campaigning they have deployed, most recently in the Florida primary, where their advertising buy is approaching $13.8 million; not to mention the unprecedented, co-ordinated public attacks on Gingrich’s candidacy by former and current legislative Republicans. Consider the reaction from the self-appointed spokeswoman of the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin:
What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque rewriting of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on. In fact, the establishment has been just as dismissive of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice. In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights. The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters.
Sarah Palin – Cannibals in GOP Establishment Employ Tactics of the Left Facebook 27 Jan 12
That Palin would identify the GOP establishment as the opposition and characterise their behaviour as “cannibalism” suggests the famous aphorism on the French revolution:
La révolution dévore ses enfants.Georg Büchner, Danton’s Death, Act I (1835)
The revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children. And Republicans are setting themselves up for an inevitable banquet on Newt and his supporters; a recipe for a disastrous nomination fight entirely of their own making and a Tea Party cohort even angrier at them than Obama, if such a thing is possible. The challenge for Democrats is to stand back and let them have it out, for now. They seem to be making an excellent job of it so far.